The Minnesota Park that Has Banned Pickleball

Pickleball has become the latest and greatest thing that literally everyone and their mother has been trying over the past few years. There are pickleball players out on courts as soon as the weather is somewhat acceptable.

But now, there's a Minnesota park that has caused quite the snafu by banning pickleball. Uh oh!

History of Pickleball

Pickleball was created by a family who wanted something to do on the weekend.

USA Pickleball writes that in 1965, two friends, "Joel Pritchard, congressman from Washington State and Bill Bell, successful businessman," returned to Joel's house after playing golf to find their families sitting around bored.

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They decided to play some badminton but didn't have enough rackets. So they grabbed ping pong paddles perforated plastic ball, and started hitting the ball back and forth over the badminton net.

Later, they realized that the ball bounced nicely on the asphalt. Then they decided to lower the net.

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Eventually, Joel and Bill came up with rules for this new game they had created, keeping "in mind the original purpose, which was to provide a game that the whole family could play together."

And now, all these years later, it has taken off and there are pickleball courts EVERYWHERE.

Maple Grove, MN Park Bans Pickleball

Not everyone wants pickleball to be played, however, including this one particular park in Maple Grove.

It's the Fish Lake Woods Park where a sign had popped up outside of the pickleball court saying "Pickleball is prohibited". The court had been painted over, too.

At first, people thought it was a joke, but no. KARE 11 reports that earlier this month, the Maple Grove Parks and Recreation Board decided to ban pickleball at Fish Lake Woods park because of the number of noise complaints they were getting from people near the court.

You know that classic 'dink' sound when the ball is hit? Yeah, that's what people were complaining about. I'll give it to them, that's not a quiet sound.

KARE 11 writes that "the board considered noise mitigation that would have been costly and minimally helpful".

After studying what other cities have done in regards to noise complaints surrounding pickleball, the rule has been adopted, which seems to be in place in many other cities, that pickleball courts must be at least 150 to 200 feet from the nearest home.

The townhomes by Fish Lake Woods Park are only 75 feet away.

Some neighbors in those townhomes say they've never had issues with tennis or basketball, but the sound that the ball makes when hitting the pickleball paddle is much louder and more intrusive.

Of course, a petition is going around among pickleball players to get their court back. As of writing this post, 302 people have signed it.

The possible compromise is to set limited hours for pickleball play at the park and/or require quieter paddles to play. All of that has yet to be discussed, though.